Scoop: Juniper, Ericsson go for OpenStack gold

The OpenStack Foundation may get more networking mojo next week when Juniper Networks and Ericsson are on the ballot to become Gold members of that organization.

Both companies are already corporate sponsors but have applied to join the foundation itself and their applications will be voted on on Monday, according to the agenda for Monday’s OpenStack board meeting. That meeting kicks off the annual OpenStack Summit in Portland, Ore. A Juniper spokeswoman confirmed that company’s application. Ericsson could not be reached for comment.

Update: Mats Karlsson, VP of architecture and process for Ericsson, said the company brings an understanding of networking and telecom to the table. Stockholm-based Ericsson had already decided to offer OpenStack-based services because it liked the open-source ecosystem and sees tremendous traction. The company has services in beta now with commercial roll-out slated for early 2014

Juniper and Ericsson are already corporate sponsors of the open-source cloud effort, but joining the foundation will give them them a seat on the board. the chance to win a seat on the board. It also requires a funding committment of between $50,000 and $200,000. (The formula is pegged to company revenue per the OpenStack wiki.). Each of the eight top-tier Platinum partners — AT&T; Rackspace IBM, HP, Nebula, Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu — pony up $500,000 per year and must commit to a three-year tenure.

Other Gold members — the total number is limited to 24 companies — include Juniper rival Cisco Systems, Cloudscaling, Dell, Intel, Mirantis, Piston Labs(see disclosure), VMware and others.

Talk at the summit will no doubt focus on how new features and functions of the Grizzly release of OpenStack can bring value to customers. Folks will especially be watching for new customer stories. Most of OpenStack’s case studies to date revolve around tech companies — HP, Intel, Cisco/Webex — all of which are building OpenStack implementations for their own use or which they they want to sell. Now, with Grizzly being the seventh major release of code, it’s time to show OpenStack traction in the world beyond the tech bubble.

This story was updated at 8:45 a.m. PST with Ericsson comment.

Disclosure: Piston is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.